County ceritifes votes

None of the results changed per se, but Monday's canvass of last week's city and school board elections did help fill in some of the blanks.

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By Tim Linn

The Leavenworth Times - Leavenworth, KS

By Tim Linn

Posted Apr. 9, 2013 at 7:00 AM

By Tim Linn
Posted Apr. 9, 2013 at 7:00 AM

Leavenworth

None of the results changed per se, but Monday's canvass of last week's city and school board elections did help fill in some of the blanks.

Those blanks were the write-in votes for a number of positions on the ballot without an official candidate. They included one of the three positions on the Leavenworth Water Board. Incumbent Teresa Wood and Richard Gervasini filed papers to become the two official candidates for the body. Closer to election day, Greg Kaaz announced a write-in candidacy for the third seat.

“He received 278 votes, which made him overwhelmingly the winner,” said Leavenworth County Clerk Janet Klasinski.

Kaaz was likely the winner on election night last Tuesday, but Klasinski at the time said her office would not be sure until the county commission, acting as the Leavenworth County Board of Canvassers, reviewed and certified the results.

Also decided now that the votes had been finalized was the race for Easton mayor. Klasinski said no one had filed for the seat, but that Phillip Mires had garnered enough write-in votes to take the contest. And in the race for three open seats on the Easton School Board, she said incumbent Howard Crook won the write-in vote for the open seat in Position 4.

Klasinski said there were a total of 23 provisional ballots cast in the election.

“Eight of which I would not recommend we qualify because they do not fall in the realms of being able to be accepted,” including that the voters had not previously been registered in the county or registered to vote after the books had closed, she said.

With all of the eligible votes counted, Klasinski said only 3,474 ballots were cast out of the 46,456 registered voters in the county for a total turnout of 7.48 percent. Some areas, like the city of Basehor, had 17.5 percent turnout. The county's largest precinct ― Glenwood near Basehor ― had only 1 percent of its voters cast ballots.

The Leavenworth County Commission certified the results and voted to reject the eight unqualified provisional ballots.